Thursday, October 3, 2013

*This blog is in no way related to Franciscan University*

Dear Blog and Blog readers,

Today  in lab, we checked our results for our motility test that we completed last lab. We determined that our bacteria is non-motile because there was no movement for the original point of insertion as can be seen from the following image.

Next, we conducted multiple lab procedures beginning with the
litmus milk reaction. This reactions will tell us what our bacteria is producing, whether it be acid, renin, proteolytic enzymes, proteases, or deaminases. We started by inoculating the Litmus milk tube with our unknown bacteria "S2." Then, we placed the tube in the 25 degree celsius incubator until next class.

After we finished with the Litmus milk, we began a test involving Casein, which will tell us if our bacteria is able to hydrolyze casein, which is a major protein in milk. First, we obtained a sample of our unknown bacteria. We then made a short streak of our bacteria on the surface of the Casein.  We placed the plate in the 25 degree incubator until next class.

Making a streak of bacteria on the Casein.

Once we completed preparing the Casein plate, we obtained another loop of bacterium from our unknown sample. Next, we inoculated our gelatin tube with this sample of bacteria in order to determine our bacteria's ability to hydrolyze gelatin. We placed the tube in the 25 degree incubator until next class.

Following our procedure with the gelatin, we made another loop full of bacteria and made a streak on our starch plate. This was conducted in order to determine if out bacteria is able to hydrolyze starch. We placed this plate into the 25 degree incubator and waited until next class.

Finally, we began making our hanging droplet slide . . .


We started with obtaining our bacteria culture broth.

Then, we applied petroleum jelly to the edges of our slide cover from the edges of Sam's hand.

Next, we placed the coverslip jelly side up on a paper towel as we used a flame inoculating loop to place a loop full of bacteria on the coverslip.

Then, we placed the coverslip over the depressed side of the slide. Droplet side down.

We placed the hanging drop slide under the microscope, and we determined that we had non-motile bacteria due to the fact that we could see no movement under the microscope. Our results matched the results of our Gel-motility test which also said that our bacteria was non-motile.